sisters (I use the word in its maternal sense) for their
offspring ceases as soon as the infant toddler is "tall enough to look
into the pot." The latter emotion is closely akin to the maternal
solicitude of the higher and lower animals, while the former in its
refined ethical excellence shows that it is the result of unnumbered
thousands of years of evolutionary growth and development.

The love of kind-preservation is inherent in all animals; it ranks next
in psychical strength to self-preservation, and, in some instances, even
surpasses this so-called "first law of nature." For it very frequently
happens that the mother, both brute and human (and I use the word
_brute_ as the antithesis of the word _human_, and mean it to embrace
all creatures other than man), will lay down her life in defence of her
young, seemingly, utterly forgetting this "first law" in her aim to save
her offspring from destruction. Thus the spider whose egg-bag I had
taken away ran here and there and everywhere in search of it, seemingly
totally oblivious of my presence. When I extended it to her, clasped
between the blades of a small forceps, she seized it with her mandibles
and vainly tried to take it away. When she discovered that this was
impossible, she turned with fury on the forceps' blades and bit and tore
at them in a perfect frenzy of despairing agony. I removed two of her
front legs, yet, even when thus maimed and suffering, she never for an
instant forgot her beloved bag in whose silken meshes so many of her
young lay hidden. She continued her efforts to drag the bag away, and
was so persistent and showed such high courage, that my calloused
sensibilities, hardened by much biological research, were touched, and I
gave her her treasure, which she bore away in triumph.[72]

[72] Vide Chap. IV., _The Emotions_, p. 105.

I, on one occasion, severed an earwig at the injunction of the thorax
and abdomen; the upper portion (the head and thorax) gathered together
its brood of young and safely conducted them into a haven of safety
beneath the bark of a tree.

In crustaceans we probably find the first unmistakable evidences of
maternal love. The female crayfish, with the under surface of her tail
covered with impregnated eggs or newly hatched young, will fight to the
death in their behalf. I have, time and again, reared crayfish, and have
succeeded in taming them to such a degree that they would take food from
my fingers; whenever the fem